


The breaking of chains

by acrosspontneuf (FangedAngel)



Series: Liberation [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Developing Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Saarebas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-29
Packaged: 2021-01-11 21:09:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21228500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FangedAngel/pseuds/acrosspontneuf
Summary: When Saarea walks by the Iron Bull, his gaze lingers on her scars, and she hates how visible they make her, in ways that his do not make him. She hates what he must think of her, so she does what she normally does in this situation. She lifts a shoulder in a shrug that wishes itself casual, quirks the corner of her mouth up so that it seems like she’s smiling, looks right at him with a stare that hides nothing about what she is, and then, only then, she says ‘bit too scary for you?’ and she thinks the question does not reveal her feelings. The Iron Bull laughs and shakes his head, points at his own scars and says ‘I think I can handle it’ but Saarea leaves with the distinct impression that he’s seen right through the guise, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that.





	The breaking of chains

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sternenstaub](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sternenstaub/gifts).

> CW: body image issues, blood mention, a very nightmarish time in the Fade, PTSD.
> 
> This is written with all the love in the world for [@sternenstaub28's](https://sternenstaub28.tumblr.com) birthday, featuring her amazing OC, Saarea Adaar. It explores themes of adapting, overcoming, and two people growing together as they do so.

Saarea is always aware of them watching her, but it doesn’t stop her. It can’t stop her. Every day when she’s in Haven, she strides down to the training grounds with all the confidence she doesn’t feel and practices her strikes. 

Soon after the Bull’s Chargers join the Inquisition, Saarea can feel their leader watching her train with an intensity that makes her unable to focus. The Iron Bull represents everything she’s been running from, and her scars ache with the memory of agony. She can’t read him, but when she looks at him she knows that what he sees in her is someone not to be trusted. And all she sees in him is chains, reaching out to trap her again. Anxiety rises in her throat like bile whenever she thinks of the words he is sending the Ben Hassrath, words about her, pinpointing her location and making her a target. She doesn’t allow herself to think about it too much.

When Saarea walks by the Iron Bull, his gaze lingers on her scars, and she hates how visible they make her, in ways that his do not make him. She hates what he must think of her, so she does what she normally does in this situation. She lifts a shoulder in a shrug that wishes itself casual, quirks the corner of her mouth up so that it seems like she’s smiling, looks right at him with a stare that hides nothing about what she is, and then, only then, she says ‘bit too scary for you?’ and she thinks the question does not reveal her feelings. The Iron Bull laughs and shakes his head, points at his own scars and says ‘I think I can handle it’ but Saarea leaves with the distinct impression that he’s seen right through the guise, and she doesn’t know how to feel about that.

They drink together on the night that Haven falls to pieces, with the rest of their company giving up on keeping up with them. The maraas-lok tastes like home, and she hates it, so she has more of it, the burn of it racing through her. She’s not used to being around someone who can drink like her anymore, and she’s enjoying it far more than she thought she would. Not for the first time, she thinks that there is something powerful about drinking quantities that would eviscerate humans and still being the most level-headed person in the room. Varric is staring at her, unable to coat his awe in the layers he usually hides behind, and when Saarea laughs at him it doesn’t feel like she’s pretending to feel something she doesn’t, the loud and boisterous façade she usually masks herself with seeming less fake than usual. When she looks back at the Iron Bull, he’s looking right at her. He never seems uncomfortable at the sight of her eyes, and that makes a feeling flutter in her chest that she can’t quite describe. She doesn’t trust him, and he doesn’t trust her, but they are comrades and that means something. In this moment, Saarea feels a little less like who she used to be and a little more like who she might become. Then the alarms ring and the screams rise and a mountain falls on her, and what she thinks when she falls to her knees in the snow, numbed by the cold, is 'I wish I could have been more.’

*

In Skyhold, she tries to keep up with the motions, but her exhaustion brings all the old memories and aches back. The constant cold doesn’t help, creeping under her skin and making her chase the relief of late nights in the tavern, where it’s warm and where barrels of maraas-lok are always supplied by the Chargers.

With the state of the hold their next expedition is still weeks away, and Saarea starts feeling more and more trapped by petitions and adulations that have nothing to do with her and everything to do with the foreign titles that she has been assigned. Walking through the ever more crowded great hall is even more difficult than walking to Haven’s now-gone training grounds used to be, and every time it feels like an exercise in futility. She can feel all their eyes on her, can hear the whispers of the Orlesians hiding behind their masks, and she wishes it wouldn’t make a difference but it does. The scars hurt and she has to keep herself from touching them because she doesn’t want even more attention drawn to them. No matter what she does, she can’t hide them, nor her height, nor the strangeness of her eyes. She avoids her reflection as much as possible, and when she walks she stares straight ahead, her jaw set and her eyes fierce, and the posture or the magic that crackles just out of reach keeps them at least away from her. It doesn’t stop the whispers, so she spends more and more nights in the Herald’s Rest, where it doesn’t feel like she’s putting on a show, where the Chargers are loud and the Iron Bull holds court. She’s not the Inquisitor there, she’s just one more of them, and that feels right in a way she doesn’t want to think about in too much depth. Varric joins them sometimes, when the ghosts of his past are written in the circles under his eyes, and Saarea’s other companions join at different times, and it’s the most she’s felt like she belongs.

It’s on nights like these that she talks to the Iron Bull above the racket, the burn of the alcohol on her lips. There’s no structure to what they say to each other, but with each conversation Saarea feels less wary of him, and she believes the same is true for him. She’s always keenly aware that her words are being recorded, but she hopes that more and more of them remain for the Bull’s knowledge alone.

They talk of everything, even of the Qun, but Saarea doesn’t intend to tell him anything too revealing about her own experience until it all spills out of her, one frozen night when she can’t bear the sight of herself and the layers she’s wrapped herself in do nothing to hide her from sight. The tavern is almost empty, and it’s just the two of them at the table, empty tankards lined in front of them, and Saarea just keeps talking, because the scars hurt, because she’s kept the memories to herself so much that they’re tearing her apart from the inside and he has scars too but they hold none of the same meaning, and she doesn’t know why but she wants him to understand, she wants him to see.

As Saarea speaks, the Iron Bull’s eyes harden, the flames from the hearth drawing shadows on his face. She knows what he’s been trained to think, she knows he never flinches at the sight of her but he always does at the sight of her magic. She used to believe what she’d been told too, but that had evaporated in the sparks of the explosion that coaxed blackness in her eyes and allowed her to flee back then. Sometimes, on the worst nights, she still longs for home, for the comfort of discipline even as it chained her. In the world outside the Qun, chaos prevails, but Saarea knows now that freedom means more than order. The Iron Bull, however, still belongs to them, to those unseen figures of her past.

He says nothing as the words spill from her, and she doesn’t need him to speak platitudes so it suits her fine. When she falls silent too, they sit there, staring ahead of them, as an icy dawn breaks outside.

*

Saving the Chargers is not really a decision she struggles to make. She doesn’t want the Qun anywhere near her, or near her companions, or near the Chargers. The Inquisition doesn’t need it, and she definitely doesn’t, but her heart still clenches when relief and heartbreak clash on Bull’s face as they watch the dreadnought burn. She knows that feeling well, that jarring rupture of everything she’s ever known. There is no comfort she can offer, not for this, but she brushes her hand against his, just for a second, and then leads her other companions away, leaving Bull to the Chargers, his real family.

By the time the Ben Hassrath make their third assassination attempt, Bull’s face has recovered its usual carefree mask. He hasn’t talked to Saarea, not really, but she’s watched him train with Krem, and whenever his mask slips the relief always wins over the sadness.

One morning she’s doing her usual training in the courtyard, and she can feel him watching her. She doesn’t know why she does it, but for once she trusts herself enough to act on instinct. She sends a lightning bolt into the dummy, interrupting apothecary Adan’s walk to the infirmary and making him jump and grumble into his beard. Saarea apologises with a smile, and then turns to look at Bull, who’s grinning at her. 'Looking good, boss!’ he says, and ‘boss’ still sounds too much like another word in qunlat for comfort, but still something flutters in her chest again, something she can’t quite figure out, something just out of reach, something she’s never allowed herself to think she deserves. She challenges him to a sparring challenge, agreeing to his term of ‘no sparkly stuff’, and Krem finds them hours later, laughing.

*

In Adamant, they fall into the Fade, and Saarea jokes about it at first, ridicules the fear lurking in every corner. For the first time since their first meeting on the Storm Coast, Bull’s face is an open book, his terror obvious. Saarea leads the way but stays close to him, trying to dispel the confusion with remarks that wish themselves witty, trying to brush the Nightmare’s remarks off, but Bull’s hands are shaking, and Saarea is focusing so much on keeping him and the rest of her team safe that she doesn’t step into the portal until it is too late. She ends up in an entirely different part of the Fade. Up is down and time doesn’t exist, but the fear is real and tangible and utterly blinding. Saarea can’t find her way out, the Nightmare whispering at times, screaming at others, feeding her images of the torture she’s been through, of the pain and the horror she’s tried so hard to bury. Her scars are bleeding like they’re fresh, and she believes it when the Nightmare keeps repeating that she deserves it, that she deserves all the agony, that she should be kept on a leash, that she’s dangerous and out of control.

She crawls her way back without any sense of direction, and she ends up hearing Bull’s voice calling for her, and it sounds almost desperate but she can’t be sure, she can’t be sure of anything. She doesn’t know where her staff is, but the magic is crackling and sparking around her hands, out of control again but guiding her to her companions. By the time she reaches them the blood is gone but her throat feels raw, like she’s been screaming, and she can’t tell if that happened or not.

When the next demon appears, Saarea’s magic bursts out of her, unleashed and unstoppable, and she can see the fear in Bull’s eye but she doesn’t stop until she’s out of the Fade, the shock of the real world calming her down. The immensity of what has happened only hits her later, when she can’t stop shaking at the thought of the person left behind, at the onslaught of memories. Her scars ache for days, and Bull doesn’t look at her once on the way back to Skyhold.

*

Saarea hides in her room and doesn’t emerge for days, not even when Dorian brings her the staff she’d thought lost. She’s scared of touching it, and Dorian’s eyes are kind, but she can see that he doesn’t know what to say so she lets him go without a word other than a murmured thanks. Her voice still feels splintered and when she looks down at her hands she keeps seeing chains and the rusty stain of blood. Oddly enough, no one bothers her, and Saarea thinks about what they’re most likely saying about her but she can’t dwell on it because everything else is already threatening to crush her. She feels monstrous, and the words of the Arvaraad keep haunting her. She should be in chains. It’s for her own good, for the safety of those around her. She thinks of the fear in Bull’s eyes, thinks of how she dared long for what someone like her could never have. She’s painfully aware of each and every scar that mars her skin, as aware as she is of her horns needing to be tended to, but her hands are shaking and she sits in the dark until it feels like nothing else exists.

Bull’s voice filters up to her, carried by the wind, an indeterminate amount of time later. When she opens the doors to the balcony, snow flurries and a chilling wind rush in to greet her. Far below, Bull is laughing while training with the Chargers and a variety of onlookers braving the cold to watch them. He seems to be boasting about the new scars from Adamant, and Saarea envies him that, but she also feels the odd urge to laugh, the sound of his voice soothing her. She’s not fond of the cold, but in this moment the light snow twirls around her in a way that feels beautiful, and she can breathe in the frost in the air and for a moment it feels right. She can see him look up at the balcony, most likely having caught a glimpse of her movement. He doesn’t turn away when she waves, and when she reaches out to her staff the magic is fully under her control.

A few afternoons later, Saarea’s hands have stopped shaking enough to allow her to pay attention to some of the letters on her desk. She is interrupted first by Josephine, who leaves her a tray of what she calls ‘Orlesian petits fours’ as an offering from the new baker. Next, Dorian and Vivienne bring her a selection of runes from Dagna that they all pore over before Varric comes to read her a chapter from his new novel that -mercifully- seems to have nothing to do with her, as of yet. Sera comes over the next morning to gossip with her about everything and nothing, the subject of Adamant kept at bay for now. She finds Cole’s hat on her desk, covering a piece of spiced apple pie after she returns from the rookery, where Leliana’d showed her a basket of week-old baby nugs.

It carries on like this until she is sure she’s fallen into a rift because it all feels surreal, because she doesn’t deserve any tokens of affection. She walks into the Herald’s Rest for the first time since Adamant in a state of utter confusion and the Chargers cheer at the sight of her. It feels impossible, but everyone gathers around her, like she’s worth looking at, and Bull smiles at her. She talks loudly about insignificant things and it doesn’t feel like a performance. She beats everyone, particularly Cullen, at Wicked Grace, and she laughs and drinks and laughs some more. Her hands aren’t shaking and her scars aren’t hurting and it feels normal. It feels like perhaps she has a new home. No one flinches at the sight of her, and she doesn’t understand it, but she feels she might accept it.

Later, much later, when the laughter has died down and the tavern has slowly started emptying, Saarea finds herself once more at a table with Bull and no one else.

‘Do you think I should be in chains?’ she asks, and it’s not even slightly what she wanted to say, but it is what spills out and she can’t bring herself to take the words back. She needs to know.

Bull looks at her in that steady way he has, like he’s considering what to tell her, and she finds herself wanting to touch the scars on his cheek. It’s yet another thing she doesn’t deserve, but for the first time in her life she can’t find it in herself to want to stop longing for it.

‘Do you?’ she says when the silence stretches almost unbearably, aware of his hand on the table, so very close to hers.

’No,’ he answers, and it sounds so definitive that Saarea feels inclined to believe him even though she knows he could easily lie to her. Protests rush to her anyway, and he sees them on her face. He lets his fingers rest on top of hers and the contact is almost too much. ‘You don’t deserve that, boss. You’ll never deserve that. I’m starting to see that maybe no one does.’

An odd sort of sound breaks from her and his hand is warm and it almost feels like he’s speaking a language they don’t share. She wants to say something funny, wants him to make a joke, wants something to feel normal, but what happens instead is that his free hand finds its way to her cheek and his thumb traces the scars around her mouth like he can’t even fathom being repulsed by her, and she laughs, almost deliriously, the room empty around them and him touching her.

He’s looking at her like he’s waiting for her, and all Saarea can think to do is to press her forehead to his and breathe, drunk on freedom, on all the possibilities that she can almost reach out and claim.

For the first time, the chains that her memory has woven around her start to disintegrate. For the first time, she feels light.


End file.
